David Morse helps startup founders and sales teams achieve revenue nirvana. He is President of consulting firm B2BSalesVP and CEO of SaaS company Kindoo which is like a private YouTube for sales teams and sales training and development.

“If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.”
Louis L’Amour

This is my 1,226th post since my “Welcome Entrepreneurs” on Oct 1, 2006. I started SKMurphy in March 2003 when I took a leave of absence from Cisco, fully committing when I incorporated in August and decided not to return to Cisco. This is not my ten year anniversary lessons learned from consulting and entrepreneurship post–and at my current rate of progress on finishing that one it may be titled “Eleven Years of Customer Development Consulting” unless I can finish sooner and come up with something more clever.

This is a “professional blog” not a lifestream or journal., although it is more personal from time to time.

“Authenticity is the new bullshit.”
Hugh MacLeod

I try to write as I speak and think, only better because I can revise. I still have over 700 drafts of partially complete posts, a testament to my commitment or quality, perfectionism, or inability to finish something beyond the initial rush of enthusiasm and distraction of newer and more alluring projects.

For the most part I write a blog in response to:

a question from a client, or a prospective client

a question in an on-line forum (and will often post my first draft as an answer there),

another article or blog post (and will often post a comment there that serves as a first draft)

a talk or event I attended.

I try and write from a perspective of a skeptical entrepreneur who has an engineering or scientific background and is looking to make sense of a situation that may recur, is trying to discern trends and forces at work they need to factor in to plans for the business, or is looking for a useful reference or practical how-to for skills that they need to hone (e.g. interviewing customers, selling, negotiating,…).

“This stuff is hard. That’s why it’s interesting.”
Hugh MacLeod

When I came home after my first year of college I told my father that I wanted to become a writer. I had written stories in high school, won a partial scholarship from Washington University for an essay “The Search for Reality and Identity in the Writings of Phillip K. Dick” (which I declined because I wanted to get out of St. Louis for college), worked as a reporter for my high school and college newspapers, and had a wall littered with rejections for short stories I had submitted to magazines ranging from Boys Life to Harpers.

He told me,”It’s time you stopped having these illusions about yourself: devote yourself full time to writing this summer and see what you learn.” Mixed encouragement but for six weeks I woke up every morning, went down to the basement (much cooler in the St. Louis summer down there) and wrote using an electric typewriter. I still have some of the drafts I produced from my efforts. I got a job as a cook’s helper and another as a furniture mover and kept busy moving heavy, hot, or sharp objects without getting hurt for the rest of the summer. In hindsight I think I am better at analyzing and making sense of real events and situations than writing fiction and I didn’t have enough of a stock of experiences I could draw on to sustain my effort.

But in a very real sense I continue to work as a writer. I make my living writing for our clients, often either by giving them the first “bad version” that unlocks their ability to revise (or scrap and restart) or helping them to craft e-mails or presentations. Writing about a topic allows me to be more fluent improvising remarks in negotiations or in response to questions. I think if you approach it with that in mind then the revising allows you to clarify your thoughts in a way that can be harder in a conversation.

“A man of genius may sometimes suffer a miserable sterility; but at other times he will feel himself the magician of thought. Luminous ideas will dart from the intellectual firmament, just as if the stars were falling around him; sometimes he must think by mental moonlight, but sometimes his ideas reflect the solar splendour.”John Foster Journal

It has not gotten any easier, in the sense that some posts come quickly in a rush and most take a while to percolate. Deadlines help in this regard, as do collaborators. When I write a few hundred words in fifteen or twenty minutes I feel like a genius. Often the last hour before a deadline (or the first hour after a deadline–preliminary deadlines help in this regard) releases a flow of insight. Other times I need to write using the “morning pages” technique just to unlock a post. Drafting it as a e-mail to a particular client can help.

I jot down phrases, sentences, and passages I find well written and insightful and use them as points of departure or closing quotes for posts.

One of the significant differences between my blog posts and a conversation is that I will often sketch one or more diagrams to model a situation or elaborate on a point or concept. I have not found an easy way to do this with my blog posts…yet.

It’s helpful sometimes to give a blog post as a talk first, and then transcribe and refine. The act of speaking forces a level of coherence and organization that is sometimes difficult to achieve facing a blank screen.

I am inspired by authors like George Higgins, William Feather, Raymond Chandler, Peter Drucker, Gary Klein, James Lileks, Gerald Weinberg, Glenn Reynolds, Clayton Christensen, and Seth Godin, to name a few. I enjoy the sensation of reading an author who is trying to make sense of a situation by looking at data and historical precedent, informed by their experience and expertise, and who maintain their intellectual integrity by acknowledging facts that contradict their suggestions or conclusions.

“We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.”
Somerset Maugham

If you have a topic or question related to entrepreneurship you would like to see me address, or better to collaborate on, please contact me directly.

Update Nov-25-2013 Steve Wasiura commented “One doesn’t realize how difficult it is to write a blog post, especially a good one, until you try it, and find yourself staring into the glaring pixels of a blank white form. It can be even more depressing when you look at your visitor statistics and realize no one is reading your painfully crafted blog posts, especially in the early days. I’ll refer back to this when I need motivation to continue.”

I think the trick is to make blogging a follow on from other activities: e-mails that you are writing, forum responses, notes from a conversation. This way a post flows from time and thinking already invested in problems you know that you are wrestling with or that energize you.

I have been really encouraged by comments I have received on some recent blog posts:

Fantastic textual content and additionally a great web site.

Your authored material is stylish.

You are wonderful! Thanks!

WOW just what I was looking for.

I truly like your way of blogging.

Thank you for another excellent post.

It’s a shame that they ended up in my spam folder. Apparently folks who sell pharmaceuticals, toner ink, and mortgage refinancing, not to mention site owners who host a wide variety of video clips all really really appreciate this blog.

As for you, my fifteen readers, please let me know what I can do to improve your reading experience.

Update–later that same night–A real comment from Will Sargent that did make my day:

I read your blog and appreciate how to the point you are. You have a good healthy balance between practical discussion and idealistic views. Your blog is an example to others.

Prospects gain an appreciation for your expertise and ability to understand and to solve their problems through what you write, what you say, and what your customers’ say about you. You should have a plan for developing referrals and testimonials, but I want to focus writing and public speaking as opportunities to demonstrate your expertise and give prospects a reason to believe that you can assist them. These outbound messaging strategies will complement your referral program and are essential to attracting new customers and cultivating valuable long-term business relationships.

Here are some suggestions for practices that will help you routinely refine and curate your thoughts.

Written content:

Collect Good Questions & Your Good Answers: When you get a good question from a prospect or a customer take the time to write up a succinct answer in a follow up e-mail (even if you have answered it in a phone call or face to face meeting).

Refine & Generalize Your Good Answers: save your e-mail in a special folder for “good answers” and set aside time every week or month to reviewing and refining it so that it becomes a more general answer that’s applicable to more than just the person you initially answered it for.

Start a FAQ on your website: If you don’t have one it’s worth considering starting a “Frequently Asked Questions” list. If a particular question indicates you have a defect in our standard presentation or marketing materials it’s more appropriate to fix the source of the question instead.

Reformat Your Generalized Good Answers: Convert good answers into articles or blog posts.

Talks

Make the Time to Rehearse: Always leave time to rehearse in front of at least one other person before you give the live talk.

Record Your Talks: Record at least the audio for your talks and listen to both your presentation and any Q&A. Listen to it again a few days later and a month or two later.

Consider Writing an Article: either as a leave behind instead of your slides or as another blog post.

Never Give a Talk Only Once: Considering the cost in time to develop and rehearse a good talk, you want to find at least three opportunities to give a talk or variations on it.

Videotape A Good Talk In Front Of An Audience: Once you have given a talk two or three times live either do a video recording of it or arrange to have later versions videotaped. You will look and sound much better in front of a live audience with a talk you are comfortable giving and this will come through on the video. Consider editing it into a couple of 5-10 minute chunks if you can to use as teasers, summaries, or good stand-alone content.

Additional Book Reviews

In my “Maiden Voyage” post on Jul-30-2010 for my Entrepreneurial Engineer blog on EE Times I said that I would focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in the broader electronic systems design ecosystem. I hoped to provide insights in the following areas:

I have another ten posts in various stages of completion and plan to post one a week at least for the first quarter of 2011. If you would like to be interviewed or have some insights you would like to share about areas 3 and 4 in particular please contact me.

We’re all born late. We’re born into history that is well under way. We’re born into cultures, nations and languages that we didn’t choose.

Among all the things we don’t control, we do have some control over our stories. We do have a conscious say in selecting the narrative we will use to make sense of the world. Individual responsibility is contained in the act of selecting and constantly revising the master narrative we tell about ourselves.

Explore a mastermind group for bootstrapping technology startups that would complement the Bootstrapper Breakfasts in Silicon Valley. Please contact me if you are interested in taking part, we will likely start one in January 2011.

Warning Dates in Calendar Are Closer Than They Appear

There are slightly less than eight weeks left in 2010–given that Thanksgiving and Christmas take place in two of them it’s more like six work weeks–so it’s time for a kick finish if you need to catch up.

Mark Zimmerman’s Zhurnaly (“Russian for Journal”) ) is food for the soul. The wiki format allows him to blend a journal, a runner’s diary, a commonplace book, and short essays. I enjoy his insights and his exploration Zen and ongoing self-improvement. It’s worth reading whenever you want to renew your gumption.

“I recommend it wholeheartedly for entrepreneurs even though it’s written by a physicist with a Zen frame of mind who has taken up marathon running in his 50’s. He is thoroughly committed to mindfulness and self-improvement, two goals any entrepreneur should strive for.”

Help other people help you. Don’t struggle alone; we’re all in this together. Did somebody assign you an impossible mission? Maybe they meant to request something different. The situation may have changed since you began. You may have taken a wrong turn. Ask early and often for clarification, suggestions, feedback, …

Fail for a good reason. It’s OK to crash and burn if you took a well-calculated risk and it didn’t work out. It’s fine to let a higher priority (e.g., family, health, spiritual obligation, etc.) preempt a task. But there’s no honor in “I forgot” or “The time just slipped away from me” or …

This advice was reportedly posted on Samuel Beckett’s wall beside his desk. Any worthwhile pursuit — gardening, cooking, drawing, writing, thinking, teaching, learning, … — is never done to perfection. There is always room for improvement, a shortfall to correct, an error to identify and fix.

That’s precisely what makes something worthwhile: inevitable failure, plus the golden chance to try again, and to do better next time. Living is like that.

“I am far off old age, but old age is approaching daily. The terrors of old age are solitude, neglect, boredom, lack of suitable activity, utter dependence on others, and the consciousness of wasted opportunities, of having achieved less than one might have achieved. What am I doing now to destroy those terrors, or even to minimise them? Am I sufficiently providing for the final years? Am I keeping my old friendships in repair and constructing new ones? Am I, in the intervals of satisfying my greatest interest, creating minor interests which will serve me later? Am I digging my groove so deep that I shall never be able to climb out of it? Am I slacking?”

“No corner of the field is too small to occupy. No effort is too humble to produce an effect worth producing. No effort is wasted. And there will never be any millennium, you know! The millennium is a chimera. A millennium involves perfection. A hundred centuries hence the citizens of those days-to-come, regarding us of the twentieth century somewhat as we regard the inhabitants of the stone age, will still be yearning towards the millennium and still be shocked by the scandalous imperfections of their humanity and the inefficiency of their communities. There can be no finality except death. The dream of a millennium is a device of nature’s, and a very effective and agreeable device, for encouraging us to be persistent.”

This blog is dedicated to entrepreneurs at any stage of their journey. As individuals, in teams, and collectively, we all hope to create a better world for our customers, our employees, our stakeholders, and our children.

Our focus is helping startups find early customers for emerging technologies. This is very different from the traditional sales and marketing at established firms. Correctly identifying early customers who can be references to others is key to introducing emerging technologies.

Although emerging technologies change the rules and often enable far reaching growth most early adopters are focused on near term risks and benefits, and it is to those concerns entrepreneurial teams need to speak to get a foothold. The decision to act as a “beta” software site or early user of new software tools often resembles a hiring decision (does the prospective customer want to “hire the team”) more closely than a technology adoption decision.

Emerging technology marketing is a distinct domain from classical product marketing, most of the traditional market assessment techniques are not effective: focus groups, surveys, etc… Emerging markets require a strong commitment by the founding team to

appreciating the prospective customer and customer’s view,

rapidly evolving the product specification in response to feedback and customer experience,

ongoing refinement and delivery of customer focused solutions.

Not everything I have written since has held up as well as these paragraphs. I believe that they still offer a good high level overview of the new product introduction problem as it applies to new technologies.

Here is my roundup of blog posts about the 2010 Design Automation Conference. You can also follow the #47DAC hashtag on twitter for breaking announcements during the conference. Last year’s roundup is available a DAC 2009 Blog Coverage Roundup.

Original intro: If you write a blog post that reviews an event, a day, or DAC 2010 as a whole with some substantive commentary before the end of July I will include a link to it. Please leave a comment to let me know if I have overlooked or incorrectly categorized anything.

Very interesting lineup of talks. If these practical problem-focused sessions can’t make the regular program DAC may slip further into a purely academic conference.

Sunday Events

Note: I am worried that the default DAC website links will break in less than a year, they are tied to the top level DAC site not a DAC 2010 encoding. If anyone knows the permalinks for the DAC sessions please let me know. If you look at the DAC 2009 Blog Roundup the 2009 DAC sessions had a year encoded in the URL and they all still work.

I would be interested in talking with other consulting or professional service firms that are using Central Desktop or other wiki systems to collaborate with clients or deliver services. For example, when we give workshops we also put the text of the relevant workbook into a custom workspace for each attendee. Also, as a part of our ongoing support for their customer development efforts we give each client their own workspace to keep our e-mail inboxes from becoming a default document repository.

I am also interested in talking to anyone who is using Central Desktop or other wiki system to develop / refine content for a book or larger document. I am working on converting a series of blog posts into a book and using a Central Desktop workspace as a refinery to review existing content and add new and linking material.

I would be happy to set up a conference call to compare notes on lessons learned and best practices. This is not a prelude to a solicitation for services or competitive intelligence gathering, it’s a an honest attempt to compare notes with other firms or authors wrestling with the same issues that we are. You can reach me at 408-252-9676 or skmurphy@skmurphy.com if a few folks are interested I will set up a teleconference, happy to compare notes just pairwise as well.

Wikis dissolve voice and authorship. Use them where there are rewards and incentives at a team level, where a team is being held accountable for a result.

Blogs and forums preserve voice and authorship. Use them where knowing who said what is important.

Start with frequently updated information that is also frequently accessed:

Meeting agendas and minutes (avoiding the bottleneck of the designated note taker and/or overlapping amendments in different e-mails that then have to be reconciled),

Early and still evolving specifications

Project status in a dynamic environment

Projects end, products are shipped and end of life, problems get solved. At some point in the business world many wikis must be congealed into a document or document set and either archived, frozen as a static HTML tree, or transferred to a content management system where more formal revision and change control methods are more appropriate. Unlike Internet wikis, older project or product wikis are often better preserved as read only archives.

Wikipedia anchors a lot of expectations in a use case that is rarely appropriate to a team that is not building an encyclopedia. Hope that useful content will be curated in a general purpose wiki is unlikely to be satisfied.

Use many small team level wikis, each for a distinct project or purpose, where the team membership is clear and there are shared incentives for cooperation and success.

If you are having trouble finding time to read my blog here are five posts that I believe represent the range of my writing. Clearly I need to take a page out of the Venture Hacks notebook and create an index for the 550 posts I have written over the last four years.

But it’s been a few weeks and I am not closer to my master index so I would appreciate your help. Let me know which of my blog posts you found especially useful (or an old one now desperately in need of a re-write/update) and any areas or topics you would like to see me address.